Bleach: "Ichigo, Complete Hollowification!?" Review

The visoreds make Ichigo face his inner demons.

One of the main bright points in this episode is Hiyori. It's been a while since we've had a hefty helping of her unique personality, and she never fails to make things interesting. This story got off to a quick start with Hiyori putting a hurting on Ichigo in a fairly one-sided battle in her "complete hollowfication" state (which is cool, I admit), until our good friend Hollow Ichigo makes an appearance. The other visoreds have to step in and keep things from getting out of hand. Hiyori seemed pretty freaked out by her close call with the merciless side of Ichigo, maybe she'll take him a little bit more seriously later.

At the moment though, Hiyori is still wearing the devil-may-care tough girl persona, and not too long after the near deadly fight, Hiyori's calling Ichigo a dumbass, and Ichigo, not one to back down from insults, calls Hiyori "snaggletooth." That was kinda funny.

The Visoreds as a group are rather odd, and they haven't really displayed much of anything substantial yet. For the most part, they've just been comedy relief while progressing this "Ichigo must control his Hollow-side" sub-story. This is further displayed by the general zaniness that goes on whenever the Visoreds are on screen, along with things like Lisa's odd interest in women's "swim suit" magazines, and the hilarity of Hiyori's "super-trainer" ski-machine / spiritual trainer.

There were a lot of odd pop culture references in this one. Shonen Jump got an honorable mention, which was pretty fun. Hiyori's "super-trainer" seems like nothing more than a homemade NordicTrack, complete with a little parody infomercial at the end of the episode. And of course, The Prince of Darkness gets a casual mention. The Visoreds must be fans of Ozzy, which makes perfect sense. I can't see half-hollow folks being into Jessica Simpson.

One thing to note is the danger that Hollow Ichigo poses when let unchecked. He almost finishes off Hiyori, and later the Visoreds have to keep him restrained to ensure he doesn't hurt anybody. Every appearance of Ichi's hollow side has shown it to be a frighteningly powerful and dangerous force, which surely Ichigo will learn to control and therefore become the badass that will save the world from the latest threat. The "inner battle" between the different sides of Ichigo's personality is very well done, but this episode is only the beginning of that conflict. Next week's stories will certainly flesh it out more.

Looking at this episode overall, what I see here is the beginning of yet another "training mini-arc," where our intrepid hero must undergo a new series of strenuous lessons in order to get even more powerful in a seemingly never-ending trend. Once again I was reminded of Dragon Ball Z, which probably started this type of storytelling, though another long-running popular series, Naruto, is certainly guilty of it as well. While this arc as a whole shouldn't fall into the kind of formulaic and predictable cycle that many shounen anime have fallen victim to, at the moment it's not breaking any new ground.